Fans: The Ultimate Promoters Dominating Advertisements Worldwide
Walking through Gangnam or Hongdae Station, the countless star advertisements shine brightly in your direction. That does not sound surprising perhaps, considering how big the star market is in Seoul. But what is surprising, is that these advertisements are not from a brand with the artist modeling their product, or an advertisement of the entertainment company the stars belong to; those advertisements are mostly made by the fans of the artists.
Fans will use advertisements for many different occasions: a happy birthday wish, a debut anniversary commemoration, encouragement and promotion for a new album or drama, congratulating the star for receiving an award, etc.
Why? Those advertisements are not cheap. Why would fans be spending money on advertising while the price of concert tickets and official merchandise is already high enough?
There are several reasons why fans advertise their artists. Besides these advertisements helping to promote their star, fans compete with fans of other artists to show off the love they have for their artist. Another big reason is that artists can notice their fans’ efforts, and sometimes even personally visit the advertisement (of course that includes uploading a picture with it), which makes the fans feel a sense of pride and that their efforts are seen and appreciated.
So how lucrative is this star advertisement business exactly?
Very. Nowadays, artist groups have about 6 members on average 6 to 7 members (according to Korea Joongang Daily in March 2022). This means that fans of an average group have 6 members’ birthdays to celebrate. Add to that the debut anniversary of the group (an important yearly party occasion for fans), a new album or single coming out once or twice a year, and then additional projects like supporting a drama or tv-show the artists will appear in, congratulating the artist on any awards they might win, etc. Overall, more than enough occasions for fans to advertise their stars every month of the year.
This culture of advertising your favorite star has been popular in K-pop fan culture for a while, and the numbers of artist advertisements keep increasing each year. To get a rough idea of the numbers, we checked several advertisement companies in Korea that do fan advertisements, and the number was astounding: in 2021 alone, these few companies posted proof of over 1400 unique fan advertisements on their Instagram. Keep in mind that this was only a sample out of many companies, and not all fan advertisements are shown on Instagram (for example the company that works with Stan World for the advertisements does not upload our fan advertisements on their Instagram). What’s more, is that the prices of these advertisements are no joke to fans’ budgets: an advertisement in an averagely popular subway station can easily cost 3 million Korean Won ($2400) for a month. Billboards on big buildings on busy roads are even more expensive: those easily go for 4 million Korean Won ($3000) A WEEK! Not to mention the prices for advertisements abroad that fans love to use, like billboards in Times Square in New York: 15 million Korean Won ($11600) for 1 DAY!
Looking at these numbers, it is not surprising that fans resort to crowdfunding to pay for these advertisements; just a few fans by themselves would have a hard time financing these advertisements, but together the crowdfunding goals can be reached. K-pop fans especially are known for the huge successes in crowdfunding (ex. when A.R.M.Y (BTS’ fandom) matched BTS’s donation of $1M for Black Lives Matter). The plane decorated with BTS’ Jimin for his birthday (seen above), was crowdfunded as well; fans raised about $309,000 in less than an hour.
Stan World makes all these amazing activities easier and more fun for fans: Stan World gives fans the opportunity to fund advertisements for their artists as much as they would like, by letting fans enjoy their usual fan behaviors closer than ever before; now they are not just communicating with each other through mediums like Twitter and commenting on YouTube videos anymore, they can actually watch the YouTube videos together in real-time through our Streaming Party.
To top it off we reward these fan activities in our app with points. Fandoms can gather these points TOGETHER, making it easier for any fan to pitch in and help the fandom reach the points required for the rewards they want. Currently, our rewards exist out of several types of IRL advertisements, YouTube advertisements, and donations; everything the fans wish for. We will continuously keep expanding the reward selection to keep up with the wishes of our resident fandoms, the fan trends, and fandom behaviors.
So how does Stan World’s Stan & Earn work? Fans play in our app and share about it on Twitter and other platforms that fans frequently visit. Inviting friends is one of the ways to earn VITA points, resulting in Stan World gaining more users, and the users earning more points. The more users from a fandom spend time in our app, the faster and easier the fandom can earn points and reach the goals it has set. Because they are getting rewarded with IRL rewards and enjoy hanging out together while supporting their artist, the fans keep coming back to support their artist, to ensure they have enough points for bigger rewards to promote their favorite artist even more and even better next time.
